Harlani
wip |-|= This character belongs to Soi-ke. }}|display: none;| |}} font-weight:normal;border:3px solid #fffdf7; color:#fff1c7; background:#03192e;" | Background Information |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Creator | soi-ke |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Attribute | loyalty |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Element | wind |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Colour | navy blue |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Animal | red-tailed hawk |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Alignment | lawful neutral |- ! colspan="2" style=" }|display: none;| |}} font-weight:normal;border:3px solid #fffdf7; color:#fff1c7; background:#03192e;" |'Character Information' |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Age | 39 (hy) |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Gender | female |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Orientation | demisexual |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Tribe | silkwing |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Occupation | enforcer, personal bodyguard and former assassin of Lord Nambi - teaches swordfighting in her spare time |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Residence | secluded estate near Bloodworm Hive |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Birthplace | unknown, but believes she wasn't born in a hive |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Relatives | Arist (mother) - unnamed father |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Allies | Lord Nambi - has connections within the Chrysalis, though isn't affiliated with it - on decent terms with her mother - positive relationship with a few of her hivewing students - well connected with the hivewing aristocracy due to her position |- style="border-top: 1px solid #c9987e; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Enemies | Lady Bloodworm, but not openly |- style="border-top: 1px solid #c9987e; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Goals | protect Nambi's position and assets from competitors - protect Nambi himself from less moral competitors - improve the societal standing of silkwings such that they are equals with hivewings - teach her students as best she can - find more time to relax and just hang out with those close to her - visit her mother more |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Likes | reading old history books - swimming - heights and strong winds - open spaces - practicing her swordfighting, as well as teaching it - has recently taken up writing as a hobby |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Dislikes | feels a bit sad when others fly - feeling useless or incompetent - being underestimated by hivewings for being a silkwing - being underestimated by silkwings for her poor silk and botched metamorphosis - deep-seated fear of starvation |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Powers and Abilities | standard silkwing abilities with sticky silk, but is flightless and her silk lacks permanence - exceptional fighter, larger and far stronger than most silkwings - knowledgeable on and experienced in political matters |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Weapons | carries a small, one-pawed messer, as well as a swordbreaker - a sturdy, weighted cloak - her great physical strength and resilience - has devised a few combative applications of her silk |- style="border-top: 1px solid #40150a; border-bottom: 1px solid #40150a;" | Quote | "All of this, is for my family." |- |} |} D E S C R I P T I O N The palehawk’s visage is graceful and harsh. She cuts a looming, ominous figure, with a long, looping tail and a sinisterly serpentine curl to her neck. Harlani's muscular frame is almost bestial in its power - incongruous in the company of frail-scaled nobles. Her head is of a tapering, triangular shape, with a thin, almost pointed muzzle. She is a living allusion to the image of an apex predator, a raptor amongst a flock of pigeons. The SilkWing’s vast wings are fused, two where they should be four, owing to complications during her metamorphosis. As a result, they are stiff and inflexible - she cannot, and will never be able to fly. Her wingspan is black in hue, graduating to a dark navy blue in places. The hind regions of her wings are divided into thin vanes, each one bearing a jarring white stripe. The frontal regions are sparsely decorated in jagged, iridescent polygons. Her dark wings are at odds with her brightly-coloured hide. Harlani’s complexion is of cream-coloured fluff, and pale, pearlish scales. Her unsaturated tint was once a source of bitterness for the SilkWing, and still occasionally finds itself a target of mockery - perceived by more vain silk dragons as lacking in vibrancy and life. But one could also perceive her colours as exceptionally bold and pronounced, encompassing both the darkest and the brightest shades imaginable. Hard, violet-grey scales line her forelimbs, coalescing into clean patterns of repeating ovals. One cannot help but see a hawk’s raptorial claws in her strong forelimbs. In line with her avian motif, white feathers run laterally along the length of her body, and encircle her shoulders and hips. Harlani’s antennae are long, and taper towards her head - two pale mauve ribbons emblazoned with false eyes. Her true eyes are glowering ambers, almost flame-like in their glare. They are shadowed by sharp regions of darker scales, resembling stylized eye patches. P E R S O N A L I T Y A proactive, ambitious dragon, Harlani radiates an aura of determination and confidence. Despite her official position as a mere bodyguard, the SilkWing has a business-minded, scrupulous demeanour, complimented by an pragmatic outlook. She is scheming, competent and ruthless in a manner more akin to a HiveWing noble than any silk dragon, having learned well from her former employer. The SilkWing is experienced in the workings of Pantalan politics, and has proven herself a match for even the most rattish, manipulative HiveWing aristocrats. Harlani easily picks up on the vulnerabilities and motivations behind others’ positions, and is decisive in leveraging them. She has become far more than a bodyguard to Nambi - her skills at managing political capital and predicting others’ actions allow her to act as an advisor to the naïve, idealistic highborn. She presents herself as outwardly polite, taking care to refer to others by their proper titles and honorifics. The silk dragon is known to affect deference, presenting herself as a listener rather than a talker - at least at first. When a situation calls for aggression and hawkishness, Harlani is quick to think up a cruel retort or a deep-cutting barb. ---- Unfortunately for her, Harlani’s sharpness doesn’t extent to casual contexts. Countless hours spent pouring over theoretical texts and political critiques have left the silk dragon ill-prepared for friendly camaraderie. She knows every word of The Effects of Social Immobility and Tribism on the Pantalan Economy by heart, but gets horribly anxious whenever Nambi asks her what she wants for dinner. The silk dragon is terrible at reading emotions in most cases. She can understand weaknesses in someone’s persona and convictions, and figure out their objectives in a heartbeat. She can infuse her threats with genuine charisma and a sense of danger and, as a bodyguard, is talented in intimidation. But all of that is just due to practice and knowledge - she laments how her social skills are seemingly restricted to analyzing one’s political aims and… making them feel bad. At her core, she is a logical thinker with limited emotional intelligence, exclusive only to her obsessive interests. At times, Harlani feels like she’s just saying random, disorganized things and hoping they stick and hoping that the dragon she’s talking to doesn’t think she’s strange and hoping that she’s not losing their interest and hoping, moons, that they don’t feel annoyed with her. Such clumsiness is often attributed by Harlani to her inexperience. She’ll get better as she relaxes and talks to people more - as she practices. But on a deeper level, the SilkWing cannot help but feel that her awkwardness stems from something other than a lack of experience. Without the focus, the clear objectives of a professional situation, talking to people seems awfully unintuitive to her. Harlani just cannot grasp it, and fears that she never will. Her more nervous aspects come into the limelight when forced to be informal. She has hyperactive, easily overwhelmed senses, which she focuses by wrapping her antennae around her horns. People usually find it a bit odd, but she finds that this keeps her anchored. Of course, despite all this, the silk dragon has friends - Nambi chief among them. That’s the problem. When those close to her open up about their insecurities, disclose their most intimate secrets expecting guidance or comfort, Harlani often finds herself just as lost as they are. She just can’t offer meaningful advice, or moral support when her loved ones need it. And she feels like she’s useless. She feels like she’s not good enough. ---- This silk dragon, seemingly doomed to fail by the moons themselves, has defined herself by her competency. It was the dark determination in her eyes, the cruel efficacy of both her swordplay and her intellect that got her out of the cells where she should have died. She found her footing. She killed and schemed and worked her way to where she is today. She remembers when she first produced silk, only to watch the fine threads decompose to nothing in a few short hours. She remembers when she emerged from her Metamorphosis, to find that her wings were stiff and useless - that she’d never know the wind beneath her as she soared. And she remembers the growing, gnawing pain in her belly as her rations were cut, as the HiveWing supervisors deciding not to waste resources on a useless dragonet. They decided that she would never be worth anything - that she would never be good enough. And she remembers when she proved them wrong. And how alive it made her feel. Harlani is known for her obsessions - most of which center around self-improvement and perfecting her talents. Being genuinely good at something, trying and succeeding in her pursuits, is a means of catharsis for her. She has become a bit of a polymath, her insatiable hunger for new knowledge leading her to hoard prowesses as other dragons hoard treasure. Recently, she’s found a calling as a teacher - a swordfighting instructor for the few HiveWing dragonets willing to learn from a SilkWing. The warmth and feeling of satisfaction that comes with sharing a skill with others, of being in a position to nurture and help others grow, has proven invigorating to the silk dragon. But when she feels incompetent or powerless is when Harlani is at her darkest. The bodyguard hates it when she is helpless - when she must sit back and let the wills of those around her and the musings of fate decide what will happen next. She remembers when she was at her most helpless, when she was a flightless, poor-silked, scrawny SilkWing - worthless to Pantalan society. She remembers how fate mused and others willed that the young silk dragon should starve to death. She feels unsafe and uneasy in positions where she cannot herself take charge of the situation, where she doesn’t have a use. And it’s not entirely an irrational fear - Harlani knows better than most what happens to those without a use, without a function in Pantala. But even more so, the silk dragon dreads the idea of failing to live up to the expectations of those around her, of disappointing the few have come to trust and love her. She strives to be dependable, to never waver or fail in anything she attempts. She rarely does. Even so, every shortcoming leaves her reeling, and brings intrusive, dangerous thoughts to the forefront of her mind. Or, more accurately, one haunting, persistent thought: Did Nambi’s mother choose wrong? A B I L I T I E S text R E L A T I O N S H I P S text T R I V I A text |-|History = text |-|Reference =